Geneva Business School: Empowering the business leaders of tomorrow with
collaborative mindsets

Geneva Business School built an online education hub to improve collaboration and
productivity for its students and faculty with Google Classroom and G Suite for
Education.

Founded in 1995, Geneva Business School (GBS) has developed into a leader in
Swiss quality education with a purpose to educate future business leaders. With
an international approach and passion for excellence, GBS helps students reach
their full potential and build real business connections.

Google Cloud Results

• Provides a single, online hub for students and teachers, encouraging quick,
effective communication and collaboration

• Allows teachers more time to interact with students by automating simple
tasks with Google Classroom

• Reduces the amount of time spent on administrative tasks such as uploading
content with a simple, easy to use interface

Education is about more than just imparting information. For the Geneva Business School
(GBS), education is about teaching the necessary skills to adapt, survive, and
thrive in the world after pupils have graduated. With a diverse, international
student body spread out over five campuses, the school prides itself on
fostering leadership, communication, and productivity skills as well as
academic achievement. In 2016, GBS began searching for ways to help its
students work together and improve communication. To do that, it turned to
G Suite for Education.

“We wanted our content stored in a digital environment where the students could
collaborate on projects even when working remotely,” says Carlos Moreno
Gonzalez, Barcelona Campus Director at Geneva Business School. “For us the
solution was G Suite.”

Improving collaboration, increasing accountability

Prior to 2016, GBS’ online course components were designed to be worked on
individually. Students could download course materials from extranet sites to
work offline on traditional word processing and spreadsheet software. If they
were working together, they had to be physically in the same room or would
communicate over email. GBS places a strong emphasis on collaborative work, but
in such a fragmented setup, it could be hard for professors to work out exactly
who had contributed what in each group.

“In just a few clicks you can get a really good picture of the whole class.
Whenever we tried this before Google Classroom, we would enter the grades
manually and it took forever.” - Sabrina Espasandin, Instructional Designer and
Google Trainer, Geneva Business School

For GBS, the solution came from its Barcelona campus, which has a reputation as
something of an innovation hub, says Sabrina Espasandin, Instructional Designer
and Google Trainer at the school. “It’s smaller than the main campus in
Switzerland so there’s more scope for experimenting with new technologies,” she
says. GBS wanted to do more than just upgrade its email. The objective was to
build an entire online platform enabling students, faculty, and staff to not
only communicate with each other, but also to use as a productivity platform
for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

Connecting students and professors with Google Classroom

After evaluating its options, the Barcelona campus chose to implement G Suite
for Education in early 2016, largely because of the widespread adoption of
Google tools by students in their personal lives. “Most of our students were
very familiar with Google tools and how Google works,” says Carlos. “It made
the transition much easier for them.” With such a radical change, GBS also made
sure to provide adequate training for everybody to help them overcome any
issues that might arise during the transition. “There was a little pushback
from people who had been using the same tools for a long time,” says Sabrina.
“But once they saw for themselves the benefits of the new system, we turned
sceptics into believers.”

The core of the new system was Google Classroom, a single, online destination
where teachers and students could quickly and easily interact with each other
no matter where they were. Gmail replaced the traditional email system,
easing the load on the campus servers. Live editing in Docs, Sheets, and Slides meant that students could work on projects and
presentations at the same time without having to email multiple versions, which
could get buried in long threads.

“It’s changed the whole way we work. Students would post questions online, and
other students would answer them before the teacher got there. It means the
knowledge comes from the class, not just from the professor.” - Carlos Moreno
Gonzalez, Barcelona Campus Director, Geneva Business School

The faculty used Sites as an opportunity to update their course
materials from static slideshows that had to be downloaded for offline viewing,
into animated, interactive pages online. Meanwhile, Forms proved itself useful as a way for professors to setup
quizzes online and, in conjunction with Google Classroom, to help automate the
marking process and quickly analyze results.

A new platform, a new way of working

The online hub that GBS built in Barcelona with Google Classroom and G Suite
was very quickly seen as a success. So much so, that within six months, the
school rolled out G Suite to all of its other campuses. As of Q3 2018, GBS has
activated more than 2,300 user accounts. The students benefit from instant
communication, frictionless collaboration, and the ability to work on projects
outside the classroom. It also means they are in a better position to answer
each other’s questions without having to wait for a response from their
teacher.

Meanwhile, GBS’ teachers no longer have to deal with an extranet that required
them to upload all their own content in an overly complicated way or spend
hours bulk-creating new email addresses at the start of each year. “The time
saved in administrative tasks has been massive,” says Sabrina. “User creation
is a breeze compared to the past.” In addition, the faculty found a new
efficiency with rote tasks, such as grading analysis, which allowed them to
spend more time focusing on students and assessing their specific needs.

“In just a few clicks you can get a really good picture of the whole class,”
says Sabrina. “Whenever we tried this before Google Classroom, we would enter
the grades manually and it took forever.”

“We’ve built a very personalized online platform designed to engage students
and reduce dropout rates. With Google, we hope to bring the collaborative
spirit we have in our normal classes to our online classrooms.” - Carlos Moreno
Gonzalez, Barcelona Campus Director, Geneva Business School

Meanwhile, Professors have found that, despite fears of an always-online
culture, the collaborative nature of the new platform empowers students to help
each other instead of just relying on help from the faculty.

“It’s changed the whole way we work,” says Carlos. “Students would post
questions online, and other students would answer them before the teacher got
there. It means the knowledge comes from the class, not just from the
professor.”

With all of GBS migrated to G Suite, the search is on for the next leap
forward. The school is currently working hard to provide some of its courses
entirely online, for students who wish to work remotely but still benefit from
GBS’ superior teaching and strong reputation. The content for the new modules
will be hosted on Sites, while Google Classroom will serve as a central hub for
teacher-student communication. GBS is working to personalize the modules for
teachers and students alike. For example, every teacher will have access to a
classroom roster that provides quick links to students’ digital portfolios,
also hosted on a Google Site.

Building on the knowledge it has acquired in the last two years with various
Google tools, the school is trying to make online learning more effective, as
well as develop more in-depth measurements of student growth and progression.
As it becomes more comfortable with G Suite and Google Classroom, GBS can look
forward to exploring its new metrics with tools such as Google Data
Studio.

“We’ve built a very personalized online platform designed to engage students
and reduce dropout rates,” says Carlos. “With Google, we hope to bring the
collaborative spirit we have in our normal classes to our online classrooms.”

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